PM: Trust in EU is high, but trust in EC is low; Georgian society has high trust in GD, people voted for us

“Georgian society has high trust in the European Union, but trust in the European Commission is very low,” Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said at the EU Enlargement Summit in Brussels, organized by Euronews.

Kobakhidze said Georgian society remained committed to European integration, while confidence in the European Commission was low due to what he described as unfair actions.

“Georgian society has high trust in the European Union as such, but trust in the European Commission is very low. At the same time, Georgian society has high trust in Georgian Dream, because 54 percent of voters went to the polling stations and voted for us. So that’s the set of circumstances: Georgian society is committed to European integration, trust in the European Commission is low because of these unfair actions, and they trust Georgian Dream because they voted for us — 54 percent of Georgians in the last parliamentary elections,” the Prime Minister said.

Kobakhidze also said that the European Commission had ultimately decided to suspend political dialogue with Georgia.

According to the Prime Minister, the European Commission had used the candidate-status issue to blackmail Georgia.

“In March 2022, we applied for candidate status together with Ukraine and Moldova, but Georgia’s application was rejected. I think that was a great mistake and extremely unfair, because there was no ground for it. Later, the European Commission published its assessment-based scores for Georgia and other countries, and Georgia was doing much better than Moldova, for example, or Bosnia. Those countries received candidate status, but Georgia’s application was again rejected.

This fact was used by specific stakeholders – the domestic opposition and non-governmental organizations funded from European and other sources. They tried to organize a revolution based on the fact that the European Commission did not grant Georgia candidate status, which was a very strange set of facts. In the end, they failed, and we had to fight for a year and a half to finally get candidate status. It was a huge struggle. We had to follow the twelve points, then nine points — different agendas provided by the European Commission — and Georgia was once again very committed to that agenda. We are very much committed to the association agenda.

Our decision was not to put the opening of accession talks on the agenda from our side. That was the exact content of the statement — my personal statement. At the same time, we specified that if the European Commission decided to open accession talks with Georgia, we would immediately join them. In the end, it was not us but the European Commission that decided to suspend the political dialogue with Georgia, in June 2024 — before we made our statement about the accession talks.

We made this decision in response to the general, unfair policies of the European Commission. We understood that the Commission was using the candidate-status issue at the first stage, and the accession-talks issue at the second, to blackmail Georgia and Georgian society, which was not acceptable to us,” Kobakhidze said.